Show Us Your Life - Favorite Recipes!

This is my first time participating in Kelly's Show us Your Life tour. This week's theme is favorite recipes. I am far from being a good cook, and most of my favorite recipes are "borrowed" from other people. Some of my favorites though are listed below.

No Bake Cheesecake - better than the "real thing"!

-I'm not exactly sure of the origins of this recipe. My mom used to make it all the time when I was little. It was my Dad's favorite and now it is Rob's favorite as well. I believe my aunt got this recipe from a sorority sister of hers back in the 60's. It's delicious.

First, you need to make a graham cracker crust. You can use a store bought one if you must. Personally I think they're nasty, but whatever floats your boat. Here's how to make a homemade one....

1 1/2 sleeves graham crackers

1/2 c sugar

1 stick (give or take) butter

-crush the graham crackers in a baggie. I usually throw them in a large ziplock, break them up some with my hands, then use a rolling pin to crush them up really fine.

-put the crumbs in a bowl and mix in the sugar

-let the butter soften, then either use your hands or a pastry cutter to mix in the butter (I use my hands, it's more fun).

-spread the mixture into a pie dish and press it firmly down in the bottom as well as along the sides.

-bake in a 350* preheated oven for roughly 10 min.

-make sure you allow the crust to cool before adding the filling!

Filling:

1 pkg. cream cheese

1/4 c. lemon juice

1 can sweetened condensed milk

-let the cream cheese soften, then mix the ingredients together on high, till it's not lumpy anymore (mine is usually still a little lumpy b/c I'm impatient and don't let the cream cheese soften enough).

-after the pie crust cools, spread the filling in the crust & place in the refrigerator for a few hours till it's firm. Don't eat too much at once or you'll get a belly ache!

That's about as original as my cooking gets. However, here are some links to some of my other favorite recipes!

Chunky Chocolate Chip Cookies

these are worthy of being sold in a bakery, I promise!

Spicy Chicken Farfalle

The Best Chocolate Cake

Bacon Cheeseburger Chicken

Onion Strings

Chicken Parmesan

We need to buy a plunger....and other stuff.

How is it that in 3 years of living in our house not once have we had the need for a plunger, but this little (almost) 11 month old can clog the toilet in just one diaper change? For those of you that don't know, we use cloth diapers. Which means when B goes #2 we must "dump the load" in the toilet before putting the diaper in the wash.

I did notice he didn't poo much yesterday, which explains the 3 stinky diapers today - and the abnormally large "presents" he left for me to clean up! Just one of those little "gifts" was too much for the toilet to handle!

He makes his daddy proud!

Brady was also cracking us up tonight at dinner. I made chicken parmesan and he ate an entire chicken breast by himself! Feeding him is so much easier now that he can often times eat what we are having and I don't have to make special meals for him. Anyway, he was eating his cut up chicken and of course rubbing it all over his face. The hair in the back of his head of sticking straight up and he looked too cute. He's been very entertaining lately.

Look at this face. Isn't he the most handsome baby you've ever seen?

Also, as I was blog hopping about a week ago I found a tutorial on how to make faux roman shades out of cheap-o mini blinds. The girl that posted the link had made some for her son's bedroom and I thought they were too cute, so I decided to give it a try myself. You can find the tutorial here. I must warn you though, it is very confusing. I really had to think it through as I was doing it. Please don't ask me questions about it though, it makes my brain hurt thinking about it!

Making them was actually very easy and I am quite pleased with the results, just the tutorial was hard to follow. Now that I know what I'm doing I think the next time will be much easier. I am planning on making some more for our master bath and kitchen windows.

I've still got a lot more updating to do. I realize I haven't blogged in a very long time, so I probably don't have any readers anymore. I accept that - it's my own fault! However, since I don't really have time to scrapbook, this is kind of a place for me to record some memories. I'm going to try to be better!

Snuggle Time!

I absolutely LOVE that Brady is now getting to the age where he can lay around and snuggle with us. Granted, he must be VERY tired to do so! On Tuesday night we snuggled as a family on the couch for the 1st time & Brady actually fell asleep laying there! Rob carried him to his room and tucked him in for a little nap. So sweet!

p.s. do you notice my new blog header??? Yeah, I made that myself! Go me!

The Vacuum

Brady's new favorite toy.

I can't wait till he's old enough to do chores!

Sorry about the lack of updating. Blogger is terrible to upload pictures to. It take so long. However, I've been taking an online course to finally know how to use Photoshop Elements which we purchased over a year ago! Now I know how to resize files so they'll upload A LOT faster. The only problem is it takes time to open them up, edit them, & resize them. So I'm not really saving any time :( I'll try to get better though.

We've been staying busy with different activities. It's Wednesday so we had our weekly playgroup. We usually meet at a local park, but this morning we met at another mommy's house. We had a lot of fun. Brady loves playing with the other babies.....and all of their fun toys!

When we got home he crashed and I've been wasting time on the internet! I need to clean very badly so I'll be doing that this afternoon, as well as grocery shopping, before heading out to my Bodypump class tonight at 5:30.

What We've Been Up to Lately

I realize I've been MIA for a LONG time. We've been busy and truth be told I just haven't felt like blogging lately :) Apparently 2009 has been THE year to get married because we have been invited to 6 weddings so far.

A couple of weeks ago Rob's good friend, Jason, and his fiance, Kim, had a beach wedding in Destin, FL. We were so excited for this wedding and to visit with a lot of old friends that we hadn't seen in a few years. I had never been to a beach wedding before so I didn't really know what to expect. But it was so gorgeous and fun. Here is a pic of us on the beach after the ceremony....too bad Brady's not looking.

Then the following weekend we headed to B'ham to see Austin & Melissa get hitched! We had a blast on this trip. Their wedding was also on my birthday which made it even more special. Here's a pic of the new Dr. & Mrs. Cox! Austin is a good friend of Rob's from pharmacy school.

Here's a pic of Rob & I. Rob served as a groomsman, that's why he's all dolled up in a tux. Thank you to Britni, for helping my fashion-challenged self find a dress the DAY OF the wedding!

You will never believe what happened in our house earlier this week.....

a SNAKE (the one above) slithered it's way into our house from, get this, the BATHTUB DRAIN! Yes, that's right it came out of the bathtub drain, I saw it with my own eyes. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. On Sunday afternoon I walked into the spare bathroom to throw something away and out of the corner of my eye I saw something slip down the tub drain very quickly. I only caught a glimpse of it, but thought it looked like a big slug. However, it moved so fast I knew it couldn't be that. So I convinced myself that it was a roach of some sort, got some bleach, poured it down the drain and closed it up. That gave me the heebie jeebies, but down here in this heat we've been known to have some random bugs crawl out of our drains before.

The next night I gave Brady his bath like normal and not thinking, left the drain open overnight. Tuesday morning I went into the bathroom to grab a tissue and about DIED when I saw a snake in the tub! It was sticking out of the drain a good 12 inches. My initial reaction was to reach in there and close the drain so it couldn't escape, but it's tail end was still inside the drain. I ran out to the family room where Rob was sleeping on the couch and was hysterical. He jumped off the couch and went to take a look, but the snake had gotten scared and went back down the drain. Rob could only see his head peering out the drain. He ran to the garage to find something to kill it with and came back with some pliers and a screwdriver. He poured more bleach down the drain hoping to either kill it that way or get it to come back out. It eventually slithered its way back out into the tub and Rob killed it. Snake blood was all over the tub. Eww! Now I'm constantly checking the tub drains to make sure they're closed. I also look VERY closely in the toilet before I sit down! I seriously can't believe this happened. I had heard of stuff like this, but always thought it was more of an urban legend. It better NEVER happen again or I'm moving back to Ohio whether we sell the house or not!

5 Years!!!

Happy Anniversary to the most amazing man ever! Seriously. I respect you and admire you so much. You are my best friend. You keep me focused and grounded. Thank you for taking such good care of me. My life would be nothing without you. You really are my everything. I love love love you!

***I know I have a lot of blogging to catch up on! I'm going to try to crank out a post or two in the next couple days!***